"I dig the grave for you: you still believe your eyes
And see the Devil in the God with no disguise"
* * *
"Disintegration and Decay. Everything"s in vain".
* * *
"I runaway. I disappear, leaving no traces behind, I"m about to be gone with the light, with the sound and with the air - so that nothing could ever remind you I"ve been at this place someday, I"ve been next to you and been a part of you. I don"t try to hurt you. I don"t try to cover myself with the mystery. I don"t try to leave any secret that will never be unrevealed. I don"t try to begin a war against you. I don"t want you to be looking for me. I don"t even want you to be thinking of me, to remember me. I only choose the less of two evils I have. And I only want you to keep on pretending, that nothing has ever happened. To keep on pretending, that I"m not even dead for now, but that I"ve never been among the living ones. You"re both learned to do it perfectly. Pretending is the thing you know, you"ve always known, best. It has already become your essential nature, it has replaced your souls and your minds, so you can"t even be called "people" anymore. You"ll never dare to wake up, to open your eyes and to have a look around... to dare to realize finally, that you"ve turned your life into the most fiendish, senseless, freakiest torment, and you still remain the only ones who can"t notice it, can"t understand. You"re both blind, deaf and mute puppets. You"re the living deadmen, the bloody heaps of flesh, epmty and suffocating from inside. You don"t look at each other. You don"t talk to each other. You have no memories, no thoughts and no emo-tions. You sleep in the same bed every night, but you think, move and act like you"ve never known each other, like you"ve spent whole the eternity alone in your own locked miserable world. And you... you don"t even notice the arrows running around and around in the clocks... you don"t hear these arrows scratching the glass... you feel nothing, not even fear or suffocation, when you stay in that room till the midnight. You get no signs... you"re both insane and both long way from real salvation, when you"re finally dead... GOD DAMN YOU...
There"s no such thought or presentiment about Laura, that could make me stay here with her or that could make me leave away from her. I"ve never hated her. Why should I? It"s true that she shouldn"t have ever been born, ever stepped into this world, it"s true that it would be the best, the most fortunate destiny for her... she was chosen for completely another role, but it could never be her fault, that"s why I feel no hate to her. I just can"t do it - it seems to be a little disgusting blasphemy to me. You don"t understand it. You never could, so it would be better if you don"t even dare to try to understand. While you"ve been wasting these twelve years from her birth till her painful freaky death, I was spending with her all this time, minute by minute, just like if I was torgued to her, fastened to her fragile dissolving body. I was carrying her in my arms, when it was too senseless to keep on forcing her legs to hold her and to move. I was washing her dirty corpus, face and hair, I was feeding her, I was making her suck and swallow the milk, and it wasn"t a milk from her mother"s breast, it was a cheap artificial milk, a slow tasteless poi-son. I was teaching her to keep her lame, ugly, sewed from the torn rugs, body in balance, though it seemed to be a hopeless torment for both of us, and I was teaching her to speak, to read and to write, but she could only pronounce seven simple phrases and remember the half of the letters of alphabeth. I was standing her sudden, unexplainable acts of agression, her screams and her hits, caused by her unrealized, intuitional hate to everyone different from her - and I did never hit her back, did never scream, did never harm.. that was all. I needed to stay next to her all days long, watching her being not just fatally sick, but desintegrating, and I swear that I"ve been never whispering the damnations to her through these twelve years. I don"t try to disappear to leave her alone, to bring her the death, as slow, as painful and senseless, as whole her life"s been... but I runaway without any doubts or regrets, without any compassion towards her, but only with the sense of silent peaceful joy: death is the only thing that could ever make my sister happy, make her feel at safe and let her finally, for the very first time, breath with the sign of relief. And now... now so will I".
She"s just finished the very last line in her final long letter, when she suddenly got the feeling, that neither her parents, nor especcially her sick younger sister Laura ever need this revelation from her, even could be bothered to read it. They won"t even pay atten-tion on it, till this sheet of paper, laying on the dressing table in the corridor, turns into the dust. They don"t care about it and don"t feel the need in it. They don"t feel anything at all, and they don"t care about anything around whether inside - already for a dreadfully long time. So she torn her letter to the snowhite shreds, then just caught one of them, the smallest one, and quickly scratched another, the second and the last, note for the people she was about to leave until they"re dead; the note was short and laconically cold, like every farewell new:
"I"ll never see you again. Thank God. Elena, never yours".
It was Monday, 31st of August.
* * *
The painful tormenting heat started to melt down along with the end of that strange my-serious day, and the heavy approaching twilight was breathing with the flavoured fresh-ness. The thickening darkness was made of gorgeous purple velvet and falling down as the tender cover on the smooth autoroad and on the roofs of the houses, ranging along the serpenting streets. The bright lights of high lamps were glittering in the folds of that velvet, like the goldish buttons. There was a silence all around, deafening every new-borning sound, dissolving even the roaring of the motors, so it seemed like the bus was not riding, but flying above the ground, like a bird or like a wind, and this illusion brought the strange feeling of peace, dissipating it to all four sides. Elena showed her obedience and kept on enjoying her harmonious serenity, since it"s been always un-known, but remained so desired and so worth of fighting for it, of sacrifice, of immola-tion... it was the sweetest irreproachable feeling, achieved Elena, like a predator achieves a doomed victim, for the first time in her life and it was mesmerizing her. She was look-ing at the mafficking artificial lights behind the windowpane and getting unnaturally sure, that right now, since this precious moment, everything in her life, everything in the world around her has been doomed to change, to turn into it"s own previous oppositions, an-tipodes, to follow another way, to replace devils and gods, to choose another place for the house of diving genesis... this magical presentiment was throwing her into the sol-emn horror, so grotesque that Elena started admiring and enjoying it too. She was lis-tening to the silence, watching the darkness beyond and slowly, imaginary playing with every small detail, remembering the final events of her last day of being a pent in the tiny flat in the house at northern boards of Şoldăneşti. The picture of earliest morning, yet though slightly colored by the first pink rays of the sun, rose up from the bottom of her memory and eclipsed the consciousness. Her slumber was disturbed by Monica and Emil or, to say better, by the unbearable, suffocating, heaviest pressure, that"s been always spinning around them, just like the planets are spinning around the Sun. Their mute, si-lent and surely endless war against each other was causing more pain, bringing more de-struction and desolation all around, that it could be caused and brought even by the freakiest hysteria, by the loudest damnations, thrown to each other"s faces - and so Elena woke up, wounded and broken. Reality didn"t just leave her alone there, to breathe this poisoned dry air for another one day, but collided her with the only sound that was filling the girl"s bedroom along with the utter darkness - it was the ticking of the alarmclock on the night table. The sound that momently forced her to hold the breath and draw horri-fied panic. Elena chased the last remaining shreds of dream away, jumped on her feet and rushed to the switch. The cold melting lamplight fell down on the dial of the clocks and let her dissociate herself from the monotonous creak of the arrows for a moment: she saw there was only a quarter past six of the morning. The presence of the last sum-mer night has still been perceived on the skin, and so a girl decided to surrender for a while, to lay down, to hide under the blanket and to try to fall asleep again. She was forcing her body to relax, to turn into the wax or cottonwool, and her mind - to get split, disintegrated, to lose the skill of intellectualizing, of pondering, of understanding the speech for those short hours. She did even take the batteries out of the alarmclock to make the arrows moveless, like a corpse under the funeral shroud, but nothing ever helped her at that morning. She was just tossing and tumbling in her bed, which seemed to become Procrustean and fossil, for half-an-hour more, then finally rose up, turned the light on again and stepped to the mirror. The mirror"s flawless opaque surface reflected a dreadfully tired, exhausted young girl, who"s dazzling beauty couldn"t be darkened, hid-den behind the heavy traces of fatigue. She was obviously suffering of terribly long peri-ods of absolute insomnia, that"s been only chased away at last night, replaced by four hours of fragile sleep, but her hazel eyes were still shining and exuding the energy. She had the tanned skin, so irreproachably soft and smooth, that it seemed to be made of the unknown perfect material. The sparkingly black unwound hair was falling on her narrow shoulders and down to the tender waist; she was usually wearing it in the tight braid, bounded by the lush red ribbons. These red ribbons and the comb have already been in her hands, when Elena suddenly, slightly realizing what she"s been about to do, threw the comb in the furthermost corner of her room, then gripped the scissors and cut the rib-bons to shreds... and when she saw these weightless blood-red shreds falling down on the floor, she surprisingly felt herself so wildly free, like if the thousand of padlocks have been just broken and trampled under her feet. She clung to that feeling, being fuzzily afraid to lose it, and she squeezed the air it was dissolved in with her fingers, trying not to let it slip away. She threw a black wool cloak above her nightdress and finally came out of her room into the corridor. The mirk, filling that narrow locked space, was cut by the glimpses of dim light, flowing from the kitchen, and Elena cautiously made a couple of steps forward, then stopped at the very threshold and looked there through the shut glass door. Monica and Emil, both of grayish color, semitransparent and so much alike, like the twins born from consanguineous brother and sister, were sitting at the big round ta-ble, as far from each other as possible. They both were absolutely silent, moveless and staring into their cups of coffee, not ever trying to rise the sight up or to say a word. There was the only slightest sign, noticed by Elena and made her feel a little bit anxious: her father"s right hand was moving in the fine tremor and squeezing, like if a man was trying to hold the knife; his big tough fist kept on shaking faster and faster, threatening an invincible enemy, until it made a sudden hit, touched the salt cellar and dropped it down on the floor. That bing seemed to be so disgusting and deafening, that Elena in-stinctively covered her ears, but neither Monica, nor Emil even made a move. They fin-ished their breakfast and stood up, both looking bended down and pressed by the freaky constraint between them... it"s been always looking like if something slight was about to take the place, a barely noticeable signal was about to be received - and a moment later they would squeeze their hands around each other"s necks and won"t unlock it until they are both breathless. This moment was inevitable, unavoidable, it just couldn"t not to come, it had to rip the reality one day, when it"s already impossible to postpone it, to hideaway - but the expectation of this fatal day, the constant necessity to be ready to find protection from the hit, ready to hit back, was much more fiendish torment, destroying the mind and intoxicating the consciousness. Watching Monica and Emil being so close to each other, in the locked incapacious space, tracking each of their clumsy heavy movements, was another one part of this torment, and Elena, painfully straining her per-ception not to miss the hit, soon was forced to surrender. She came back to her room, locked the door and clung her back to it"s cold wood surface; she felt the shiver on her skin, becoming more and more cruel with every step, approaching her parents to that locked door, and the unexplainable intuitional fear kept on forcing her heart to beat faster, so fast that it was almost doomed to get torn apart. But it was about seven o"clock of the morning, when Monica and Emil have finally left and took their destructive freaky damnation away from the flat, making it almost imperceptible till the late evening, when they both obediently, like the clockwork dolls, come back here again. Elena caught her breath again, but only till the moment when she realized for another time, that she hasn"t been left alone among these walls and that she still has the cross, needed to be carried on her shoulders. She only had the cup of disgustingly bitter black coffee for breakfast, to deafen the hunger and the thirst, remained from the tormentful night, then made a deep painful breath and unlock the door of the tiny furthermost room of the flat. That room was kept for Laura, and it belonged to her, like a cage belongs to a prisoner or like a cord belongs to the hanged man. The narrow locked space between the walls was filled with the horrible, sickening mixture of disgusting smells of sweat, urine and slowly, but al-ready unavoidably approaching death. Elena, hardly trying at least not to screw her face up, perceiving everything around this miserable hell, stepped over the threshold and walked up to a bed, hidden from the limits of eyesight in the furthermost corner.
- Still... good morning, Laura.
- Ggg... goo... go... good, - a girl started to murmur back something, which could be hardly recognized as the speech, flinched in a short tremor and excessively drooled.
- Damn... if the divine mercy is really what I see now, it"s better to burn in Hell, to decay in Purgatory, but never being doomed to feel it on yourself.
- El... Elen...Elena... Elena-a-a!... Elena!...
Laura started to scream, to shiver, like in the final agony, in her tiny dirty bed and to wave her fragile weightless hands in the air, like if she was trying to catch the gusts of sister"s breath into the palms. She suddenly started bleeding: the narrow stream of blood was running out of her nose and mouth, along with the saliva falling down to the chin through her mishaped plump lips, but a girl didn"t even try to wipe it away from her skin. It seems like she didn"t even notice it: she just kept on wiggling in the tremor, screaming something senseless and clapping her hands, repeating the same movements, like an ugly clockwork toy. Elena knew for sure what she had to do at the following moment, as well as during all the day: she knew that she had to take Laura out of her bed, to wash her face and body, to comb her hair, to dress her in a warm and tender wool, to feed her and to go outside with her, to let her lungs get the small daily doze of fresh air. She knew that she had to survive through the disgust, contempt and, most of all, through the invulner-able sense of guilt, rising and strengthening because she couldn"t suppress these shameful feelings, couldn"t get rid of them. She knew that she had no right to feel them, that Laura"s been always innocent and could never deserve the life she"s been doomed to live... but Elena already couldn"t hold it all down, couldn"t fight against this disgrace in-side. She was just standing in front of her sister"s bed, imagining it as a crib for today and as a coffin for tomorrow, just staring at helpless, long-ago doomed Laura and just doing nothing at all. This oblivion was lasting for a couple of bizarre endless minutes and then got suddenly interrupted by Elena on her own, and she finally replied to Laura, caught her shivering hands and smiled to sister with the strangest kind of satisfaction, of dim solemn anticipation in front of something, that would break the daily reality to splinters.
It was already about ten o"clock of the morning, when Elena finally could finish with washing, feeding and dressing her sister, and at last they walked out of the flat and slowly moved to the small silent park, surrounding their house from three sides. It"s still been the early Monday morning, so the park was empty and deserted, and Elena thanked a God for this lucky coincidence: she felt herself dreadfully tired, exhausted, disembow-elled since the very awakening, like if something freaky has happened with her, or was just about to happen... and so she needed the moveless mute minutes of rest. This little prayer surprisingly has been heard and answered, and Elena"s final dream came true: Laura quickly fell asleep, pressing her back to the giant old tree and dropping her pow-erless limbs down, like a moppet, thrown on the corner of the bed... and during this time Elena was able just to sit on the park bench, completely distancing herself from eve-rything, just to enjoy the sweet cool air, the impenetrable silence and the dim foggy veil, covering her face and giving the blissful rest to her eyes. She was trying to think about nothing, to care about nothing and to remember about nothing, but this morning she was doomed to fail, to lose even in such a simple game, and her mind flew straight to Laura against Elena"s will, breaking her intentions. She started to remember about her sister"s birth and childhood, clinging to the long-ago, drowned memories, all of those memories - the ones that were remaining solid and the ones that were already smashed to miserable pieces. Laura"s cry was firstly so similar to cat meowing, that Elena was sure that her mother gave birth to a kitten, not to a child, and that Laura was... magical... like a creature from the fairytale. But the magic, as always, has soon been gone, chased away by the mercyless reality, and with every new day Elena was understanding, who, what kind of creature her little sister really was, and all the previous feelings to her quickly be-gan to vanish, to get replaced by absolute emptiness, more freaky than even the indiffer-ence itself. Elena was doomed not only to grow up and to get further away from the long-ago fairytale, but also to watch Laura"s growing next to her. The cat-cry disappeared in two years after Laura"s birth, and it"s place was quickly taken by the poor, almost in-comprehensible and senseless speech, or, to say better, nothing more than a miserable parody on speech. Elena"s yet childish perception was painfully, shockingly pierced by the growing, worsening ugliness of her sister - it kept on becoming freakier, more and more grotesque with every, as it seemed like, minute. Frail, dwarfish, clumsy sewed of rags, body, that could be neither controlled, nor even kept in balance. It couldn"t ever be called a human flesh, it couldn"t be accepted as a human flesh - it was just an ugly de-formed moppet nobody wanted to play with, exciting nothing but disgust and miserable desire to wait till the moment of true divine mercy and finally to bury this boneless heap of meat under the ground. Her tiny head, with the almost missing mandible. And her face... most of all her face... it seemed to be misplaced and disfiguired, and it"s wide heavy features were making the disproportional look of her head especcially, absolutely bizarre and deformed to grotesque - this unbearable ugliness couldn"t be corrected or even darken for a little bit: in contrary, it just kept on growing with every new day of Laura"s life. Her narrow, deeply-set eyes of a dim greenish color, her cold and dry, like a pergament, skin, her huge deformed teeth, too huge to be hidden in her mouth... there was no right to feel contempt, looking at this girl, but it was impossible not to do it, no matter how hard one may try, - and Elena only remembered the last twelve years of her life because of the constant suffering, constant tormentful hate against herself, as she just couldn"t force herself to love Laura... though a little bit... how all the sisters, born on this earth, should always love each other. But it was all in vain. However, her painful memories got soon interrupted and smashed to pieces by the approaching noise, similar to the hum of the countless crowd, quickly marching to the park. It was the strangest feeling ever achieved her, ever got embodied and perceived for her - and it was hardly possible to resist it, to distance from it, so Elena did simply surrender, like a victim to predator.
Laura, suddenly woken up, disturbed by the hum or by the waves of solemn excitement, moving from elder sister, started crying, shaking Elena"s hand and poking in the side of their house. She had the thirty minutes of rest, of full peaceful sleep and of breathing the cleanest fresh air, but she was looking dreadfully tired and desolated - that was exactly that precious sign, proving, breaking all the doubts, that a girl was fatally sick and that nothing in the world could already save her or at least ease her torment. And Elena knew for sure, understood perfectly clear, that she simply MUST take her home, as soon as possible, before something freaky and irrerarable happened and before Laura"s dead - but strangely, Elena still hasn"t been doing anything to prevent it. She was simply watching the crowd crossing the streets, following the shortest route to the board of the town - and then, when the last of marching columns nearly became invisible, hidden behind the horizon line, Elena suddenly pulled her hand, making the velvet of her sleeve sliding out of Laura"s weak fingers, and fiendishly whispered:
- No, baby girl. We will NOT go home now.
- Home... home... Elena... go...
- No. Don"t you yet understand, that home is a terrible place to go. We will go to a holiday, Laura. Do you hear me? To a big beautiful holiday.
She took Laura"s hand and, inspite of her crying and furious muttering, dragged her away from the park, trying to follow and to catch the last marching column, so strangely appeared there, in moveless and peacefully silent Şoldăneşti. Elena was nearly running, following those unknown people, her body with the exciting energy pulsing inside was flying to them, above the ground, like if it was made of iron, pulling by the magnet. She became mesmerizing and hexed, like everyone from that mob, by the unique feeling of solemn rapture in front of something beautiful, magically beautiful and divine, like The Second Coming. She could hardly feel the weight of Laura"s split miserable body she kept on dragging, like a sack with a rubbish. She didn"t ask herself any questions - neither about the destination point, luring them so furiously, nor about the holiday they were preparing to celebrate, whose glory to sing there, - she simply kept on walking and walking further, like under the deep fiendish hypnosis, with no thoughts, no doubts and no postponing.
- No. No home. Not now. Stay silent. Just like a fish.
- Ele...na... Elena...
- Shh!...
It seemed like if Elena began to lose the gift of speech: the closer she and the solemn marching procession were getting to the secret destination point, the harder it was becoming for her to complete letters to the phrases - harder and obviously useless for now. Laura"s whining and moaning, her little wordless prayers, already could be neither heard nor even perceived on the skin, and soon Elena stopped even waving off from sister"s scattered touches, occassionally achieving her hands. So the crowd kept on mov-ing and moving further, across the town, and it must be really strange, that during all the time of this road no man alive, not even a homeless dog has been met by anyone of those zombificated, marching in a solemn horror, people. Laura, devastated by the physi-cal torment, too painful, too fiendish, unbearable for her fragile body, fell down for sev-eral times, right on the dusty broken road, serpenting around the board of Şoldăneşti and haven"t been trampled by the crowd only because she and her sister were walking right behind the very last column. No, Elena didn"t even notice that there was something scary and dangerous happening with a girl, she simply kept on dragging her further away, and Laura"s powerless cottonwool legs were forced to restore the balance of her body, sliding in the mud. Laura could easily die - and it seemed like this most bizarre kind of oblivion, suddenly enslaved Elena, and the appearing of the mesmerized mob, and this long freaky road were only necessary, urgently needed only to kill her, to cut the chain of her senseless torment forever. It was a bad evil mockery, that a girl has been still alive, - but at the same moment, it was also only a question of time: just ten minutes more, just a quarter of hour more - and everything would finally come to the end... but the first of the columns achieved their desired destination point, and the progression of the crowd began to slow down and finally stopped exactly when Elena was able to see the huge high stage, decorated by the colorful drapes and rising above the ground. There were the serpenting ranges of the blueish fires, burning without smoke, light and warmness, just like the fires in Hell, they surrounded the bizarre circus and were like the borderline be-tween this mysterious place and usual familiar reality. The crowd moved forward again, with the bated breath and eyes wide open, like if that suburb circus was a holy miracu-lous temple, where any made wish comes true, any disease vanishes and even the death itself has no reign and no meaning, - but the solemn feeling of their own predetermina-tion, their presentiments, rapturous fear in front of doom forced people to stop at the firelines. Elena was the only one who could dare to cross this mystical board, to step in-side the magic circle: she passed between the burning blueish lines to the very stage, - and she forced Laura to follow her as well. She momently became moveless and started to stare at the stage; there were seven young girls, yet almost children, standing there and holding the candles, glowing with the same blue fire without smoke and light. The girls were absolutely motionless, like the mannequins, the wax figures, their hair seemed to be made of gorgeous black-and-purple silk, skin - of the opaque milky porcelain, and even their eyes were remaining static, like the glass balls, inserted inside of orbits of the dum-mies. They all, with their innocent childish faces and fairy dreamlike dresses, were equally beautiful, unnaturally, artifically, like the best creatures of the most genious puppeteer in the world, and their magical glance was hexing, putting under the spell, more fast and more cruel than it could be done by the natural young beauty, - so neither Elena, nor even Laura could take their eyes out of those seven dolls. Like it"s never possible to find the only true difference between the seven gifts of Holy Spirit and the seven gifts of Sa-tanic Trinity to take the right decision. As soon as the sisters plunged deeper in this hyp-nosis again, the cool morning rain started to fall down. It"s heavy drops were painfully hit the ground, but they couldn"t extinguish the fire of candles, hold in the hands of the liv-ing dolls, and the ranges of blueish flowers around the stage also kept on burning inside of the water streams, collapsing down from the sky... and it seemed like this bizarre harmony could remain the same, unbreakable forever - but it got suddenly split to smithereens because of the silent mesmerizing voice. No. Because of the seven silent mesmerizing voices, so immaculately merging into the one magical voice. The dolls, still keeping their sights on the dancing blue candlelights, began to speak, and their speech was sounding like the most harmonious combination of sad painful song and christian prayer.
- God made you believe that the Earth and the Cosmos are all only in His reign, so you don"t dare to take even a crumb from the full profusion, so you ordered yourself to forget that you keep on owning the treasure, and you did obey. You agreed to lose your war before it has begun. You keep on distancing your mind and flesh from true rapture. You keep on denying the precedence of your nature above the death. You keep on damning the gold and keep on desiring it secretly. You keep on humiliating the beauty and keep of admiring of it. You"ll see you"ve been freaky wrong. YOU"LL SEE. Right now. Hail, Dallamos Halal, a doll made of gold and crystal. Hail, El Rey de Los Gatos, the immortal child. Hail! You"ll learn one thing above all the rest: the reality is nothing as it seems. Hail!
- Nothing as it seems, - Elena suddenly began repeating mesmerizingly. - Nothing as it seems... nothing... nothing as it seems... as it seems...
She squealed and, sliding down from the critical point of conscious and self-control, harshly waved her hand. It was the very first time for all those tormentful twelve years, when she did hurt Laura. The hit of her fist fell right in Laura"s face, and a girl, choking with her own saliva and blood from the bitten tongue, began to cry of sudden sharp pain. It was obvious, it was so outrageously clear that exactly at that moment death slightly crossed the thin fragile board, keeping it aside from the little cripple, and the countdown has finally begun for her: Laura couldn"t even restore her breath after the skipped fatal hit anymore. But Elena hasn"t been able to notice though anything around, because her attention, her perception, whole her essence were painfully bounded to the circus stage. Another one doll appeared there suddenly, the most beautiful and the most artificial of them all, with the skin of whitest porcelain, with the eyes of greenest opaque glass, with the hair of blackest silk, with the lips of softest blood red petals.
- Dallamos Halal, - the other seven dolls began to murmur her name, like if it was the name of Jesus Christ. - Dallamos Halal...
- Dallamos Halal, - the countless crowd in the sweetest hypnotic trance joined this blasphemous prayer to the most beautiful living doll. - Dallamos Halal!...
- Dallamos Halal! - Elena started screaming almost hysterically, trying to deafen her-self so that the name of the doll could remain the last thing she heard.
The doll was standing on the closed coffin, mysteriously appeared on the stage along with her, materialized from the fresh moveless air; her gorgeous, posh dress of black-and-purple velvet was decorated with magnificent lace, golden coins and the glittering gemstones of all the kinds. She smiled like if she was trying to fawn, then suddenly tore the silver chain with the huge blinding rubies out of her dress and threw it down, right into the crowd. She kept on repeating it, again and again, as it seemed to be bringing her to exctacy, - until all the coins and all the gemstones disappeared from her clothes and turned into the gifts for the mesmerized watchers. It should have caused the tragedy, it should have killed though somebody from the crowd in the crush, like it"s already hap-pened for million times, - but there was no crush at all, there was no tragedy and no-body"s died at that solemn day. None of the precious crumbs, previously belonged to the doll, disappeared in vain, and nobody was forced to pay the own life to get this gift. Not even gold could pull, scract though somebody out of the deepest peaceful mesmerism - and it was a little miracle Elena has never known before. She had her place at the table, bursting with viands, too: she remembered the magical moment, when two glittering sil-ver coins flew down right in her hands, like it was a little present from Dallamos Halal specially for her... and maybe, also specially for Laura. Yes, one coin for elder sister, and another one - for younger sister. But Elena just hid the coins in the pocket of her black cloak and didn"t even throw a sight at Laura"s side, simply to make sure that a girl is still in her senses. As soon as the last shining precious spark in the air melted down, Dal-lamos Halal became absolutely moveless - it seemed like if the magic, animating her por-celain flesh, has finally gone, and she turned to breathless puppet once again... and whole the mob, letting their souls to get separated from the bodies, got momently frozen in the rapturuous daze, in the solemn worship in front of someone"s coming up to them.
- El Rey de Los Gatos, - somebody whispered in a solemn rapture, suffocating of ex-tacy. - El Rey de Los Gatos!...
- El Rey de Los Gatos! - whole the countless crowd prayerfully squeezed the palms and joined the trance worship. - El Rey de Los Gatos!...
Elena didn"t know what these words really meant and didn"t even try to guess: she was simply enjoying their mysterious, unusual sound, their strange hypnotizing energy, she wanted to fill her veins with it instead of blood - so she kept on repeating his name with the many-voiced choir. El Rey de Los Gatos appeared a step behind the doll, suddenly, just like if he materialized from the sweet air. It was surely impossible to understand, how old he really could be, but he looked like he was only sixteen or seventeen, almost a child. Immortal child. It was so deceitfully easy to believe, to accept, that the Death Itself really couldn"t ever touch him, because he didn"t belong to It: the whiteness of his face, the glittering transparence of his disproportionately huge, almond-shaped eyes, the splendour of his long goldish hair, the fragile delicacy of his body - every smallest feature of this boy was too immaculate for mortal incomplete creature like a human child. He was something more, much more than people, surrounding his circus, - the higher form of living, perfect, preceding even the angelic nature. He was wearing the splending robe, embroidered in gold, of the deep scarlet color, - it seemed that all his clothes were com-pletely stained in the hot mellow blood. A massive cross bottony, the brightest symbol of ressurection and grace, was shining on his chest and decorating the golden rings on his long pale fingers. He softly smiled - this smile momently made his pale blue eyes burst with the pricking light - and gave his hand to the doll, standing on the shut coffin. She touched his palm and stepped down - now it was clearly seen that she was of the same height with him and even her body, torgued in the stroking gorgeous velvet, was as deli-cately slender, as his. The seven dolls with the glowing candles in their hands slowly gathered around Dallamos Halal and El Rey de Los Gatos, placing them in the locked circle. The boy made them stepped away with a gentle gesture, like if he was a thauma-turge, immaculately genious, like Simon Magician or Antichrist himself, and his reign above anyone in the world, living, dead or yet unborn, was absolute. He came up to the coffin and suddenly stood motionless, like a wax figure... and it seemed like he started to admiring that creation, which was too beautiful to get hidden deep under the ground one day. The coffin was made of glittering cherry tree, and the golden catholic crosses along with royal lillies were decorating all the smooth surface. The boy opened the coffin, and right at the moment when the lid touched the stage, seven dolls, led by Dallamos Halal, appeared in front of him, just like if the wind carried them. El Rey de Los Gatos layed down in the coffin, crossed his hands and on the chest and closed the eyes - like if he simply fell asleep, like a newborn in his cradle. The strangest kind of music suddenly be-came perceived, it was trickling out of air and fire, like the juice from the mellow fruit, and Elena"s heart started beating in unison with it"s piercing rhythm. The dolls sur-rounded the coffin and stood down on their knees in front of it; next moment their lighting candles moved closer to the boy, and the blueish flame began to lick his golden silky hair, his scarlet robe and the heavy white shroud, hiding his face. Only a minute has passed - breathless, deadly mute, tormentful, filled with the terrible presentiment of hor-ror, with the fragrance of death - and the coffin of glittering cherry tree got completely absorbed by the furious blue flame. There must be nothing, absolutely nothing left after the fire but a handful of ash - if the wind, waving around the town, doesn"t steal it be-fore. The forced inaction in front of the very face of perdition was hurting the watchers, breathlessly shivering around the stage, and it would throw them all into the insanity, if only could last for a second more - but it got suddenly interrupted, broken to pieces, by someone"s painfully loud scream:
- This is the Beast! The Beast has the wound of the sword and has come to life again!...
And it was truth also for this time. The Beast had the wound and had come to life again. Elena couldn"t hide the screams of solemn rapture inside her throat when she saw him standing up from his desolated, burnt coffin: there was no scalds, no even the smallest trace of ash on his skin, in his hair, in the folds of his robe, as bloody scarlet, as before this horrible circus trick, proving the victory of immortal child above the doom, which seemed to be unavoidable. The tyranizing, disheartening feeling of the end has been changed to the boardless, mindless and pleasuring joy in a moment, simply by his re-turning to life, simply by his little victory in the war no one alive could win. The air got momently filled with the strange names of magicians, animated symbols of immortality, of eternity of the earth and divine treasures in all the people, singing by the vociferous choir like the odes. The boy was holding the hand of Dallamos Halal, and they both were looking at the crowd below - and they were smiling, smiling just like if nothing"s ever happened here, on the very boards of Şoldăneşti, just like if they both were only the careless children. And then... then they just walked away, and the seven dolls, leaving their melted candles, were following them, like the suite follows the king, - until their fragile transparent silhouettes disappeared behind the horizon line, crossing the desert highway... and for the first moment, when realized that they had become invisible, Elena felt the tyranic, approaching to the total insanity, fear. Fear in front of the sketchy occas-sional song, of the slightest doubt that everything seen here, in this blasphemous circus, could be nothing more but illussion, nothing more but a desire, too painful and too pow-erful to be kept inside, hidden on the dark depth of consciouss. Elena didn"t remember about Laura, who"s supposed to be already dead, already lost in her silent fight against the unberable torture, didn"t even remember that she was faraway from home, in the place she"s never been before and so can"t find the way back from. No. For the very first time in such a miserably senseless life the memories couldn"t disturb her at all, like no kind of physical suffer can disturb the corpse. She was only afraid that El Rey de Los Gators, immortal child with golden hair and bloody clothes, and Dallamos Halal, the doll of porcelain and gold, didn"t exist in the same locked space, in the same time with her, like she"s already made herself believe in. The silent, deafened whining Laura helplessly tried to turn into speech suddenly achieved Elena"s hearing next moment and finally brought her in the very epicenter of reality again. She shut, squeezing the lids, and then opened her eyes, shook her head, forcing the last survived shreds of the vision to vanish away, made a deep painful breath and had a look around. She was standing at the curb of the moveless autoroad, serpenting from Şoldăneşti to Floreşti, still covered by the wisps of pinkish morning fog, and, as far as the eye could only see, there was absolutely no one around - no one but Laura, sitting on the asphalt, shaking her weak hands and murmur-ing something. The air was squeezed by the deathly silence, like by the massive metal chain, and it felt like it was tormentful to breathe. Elena, hardly holding back the tears of disappointment, took Laura"s hands and helped her to stand up from the ground.
- We"re coming back home, Laura...
- Ho... home... home... Elena...
- Yes. Home. Elena... God damn you... God damn it all...
She sobbed and threw her sight to the distant horizon line, hidden El Rey de Los Gatos and Dallamos Halal, like in the asylum: she was trying to find, to catch, to notice there though something, though the smallest glimpse, that could chase her despair away, but it seemed like there were no signs, proving that the circus stage, the blueish fire of candles and the mesmerized crowd have ever belonged to the reality. It took eternity to under-stand, that each of those illusive visions were turned into the truth, and that the Beast and the doll were really SEEN, were really mocking the death and really leaving to the town of Floreşti to celebrate here their little victory for another one time.
- Jesus Christ... El Rey de Los Gatos! Dallamos Halal! The Beast and the Doll!...
She found the coins, two silver shining coins, presented to her, in the pocket of her clothes. Her breath got broken because of sudden, extatic rapture, and she has really went insane - for ten or fifteen seconds. Then she just squeezed Laura"s hands and quickly, as quickly as she only could move her feet, dragged a girl back from the town boards to their empty flat.
- Faster, Laura, faster... you have to come back home as fast as only possible...
- Home... we... home...
- No, not we. Only you, and not me. Not me, do you understand? Never again...
It was one of the very last memories, torn to shreds, buried deep in the subconsciouss, but still perceived for Elena, still alive and pulsing with the blood from heart to brain and back. She remembered that she needed to give the medicine to her sister - there was usually a handful of pills and tablets, daily dragging Laura"s disintergrating body back to the physical existence again, daily forcing her heart to keep on beating and to warmen the blood in the veins. Elena knew there was also a hypnotic among all the other medicines - Laura was forced to take it too and to praying for a silent hurtless death during the sleep. That daily doze of that bittersweet poison once began with the five drops, now it"s al-ready achieved the number of fifteen, and just kept on rising up - to become fatal at one blissful day. But Laura didn"t receive anything from her usual toxic doze at that Monday; even if those pills could really ease her pain though for a minute, Elena somehow be-came absolutely sure that her sister mustn"t get poisoned and that her pain mustn"t been eased... so she just shook Laura into her bed, clumsy and almost fiendishly, like if it really was nothing more but an ugly puppet, and ranaway through the empty mute flat to her room. She took her fatal decision already for a long time ago, exactly at the moment when those silver coins were found in her pocket and forced her to believe, that every-thing she saw was much more than truth, much more than reality she"s been so addicted to - but it was a harder torment to realize this decision and to follow it. No matter how natural and simple it could seem to be to Elena herself - there was something, still stop-ping her, still preventing her, trying to avode her next step, like if it was going to be a step righ in the abyss. She kept on fighting and kept on resisting, trying to notice any sign, any omen, and in the ned her choise was finally made. It was already about seven o"clock of the evening, the time when Emil and Monica were supposed to come back home, Elena squeezed her only chance with her ten fingers, like the claws of a predator squeeze the bloody flesh of his victim: she locked the door of her room from the inside and climbed out of the window, separated only by two meters from the ground... and then she ranaway. There was the only one thought, perceived, pulsing in her brain, burning in her blood, the only one desire, forcing her body to move - it was the desire to appear at that strangest frenetic holiday again, to come up to the very circus stage again, to penetrate inside this performance for another time, to turn into participant from the watcher... to receive another silver coin as a present from Dallamos Halal. Yes. To see that boy of sixteen, calling himself El Rey de Los Gatos, beautiful like an angel, in the clothes stained with mellow sweet blood, to see him committing the suicide of the freaki-est kind, which firstly seems to be senselessly cruel, blasphemous and unforgivable, but then, in next minutes, turns into the triumph of miracle above the imposed limits of re-ality. It was the only visible reason, motivation to do something, to keep breathing, to let the heart beat for a girl, and she was following it, realizing it, like if the haunting of that heretic circus was her destination and the most blissful fatality. She didn"t want to think, to remember about anything else behind the solemnity she saw at morning - and she hasn"t already been able to. She simply continued her escape, running to the north-west of the town, where the bus station was placed; her way out of the past, of the depress-ingly viscous, sticky like the poison and completely senseless existence was longing in the deadly silence. It should have made her scared that she could hear no sounds, no echoes, no singing birds, no barking homeless dogs... absolutely nothing, like if she was deaf, like if both of her ears were cut off. It should have made her scared that she didn"t mean no man alive on her road, like if she was suddenly taken to the desert island, to the fur-thermost corner of the world after the Apocalypse... but she didn"t get scared, not even for a moment, not at all - simply because she couldn"t notice neither silence, nor solitude or even strangest pricking pain, playing with her heart, like a kitten with the ball of wool. No, Elena wasn"t going insane and wasn"t drowning in the painful oblivion: this familiar, sharp and complete sense of reality did anyway come back to her, but later, much later when she finally achieved her destination point, the northern bus station of Şoldăneşti. She walked up to the cash-desks and bought a ticket on the only evening bus, rushing to the town of Floreşti, to the nort-west from here. The half-empty, moving with the im-possible absolute silence, bus arrived to the station at half past nine of the evening - Elena took her place and finally let herself enjoy the blissful moments of rest, for the very first time through all of those damned twelve years since Laura"s been born... no. It"s wrong. There"s nothing about Laura. It was a magical asylum hidden for the very first time through all of her life. She threw her sight on the dark serpenting road, painted by the goldish electric fires and made another deep breath, surprisingly easy and freely, to fill her exhausted body with the cool refreshing energy, chasing everywhere in the air. Her memories slowly and peacefully brought her back from the past till the present mo-ment... and a girl, dissolving in this previously unknown pleasure, like a sugar in the wa-ter, just closed her eyes and fell deep in the slumber, dreaming about the next day, the first day of autumn, when she crosses the boards of Floreşti and sees the only of true miracles again... she wished this moment could come right now and absorb her, like the abysses absorb the fallen stones and sunrays. Two hours have passed, and the motion-less, careless dream, embracing her limp body, got suddenly interrupted: Elena opened her eyes and flinched, like if an unexpected slight hit disturbed her. A girl noticed the long marching processions, surrounding the bus both from the right and from the left sides; they seemed to be almost ghostlike, phantasmal in the glittering silver of the Moon. The blissful chance let Elena see three of those mesmerized walkers especcially clear and she discovered, that the faces of them, of two young men and a little girl of nine, were shining and expressing the solemn delight - exactly like the faces of all the people marching with Elena to the boards of left Şoldăneşti last morning. The crowds were fol-lowing the shortest way to the blasphemous circus, following the invisible, but perceived by every body cell, traces, left by El Rey de Los Gatos and a doll with the gemstones. There could be no doubts: these marching angels, replying to the call of their only be-loved and existing gods, were like the guiding stars fallen from the sky, leading the countless processions on the holiday. The bus suddenly skipped two stoppages and the final turn from highway to the entrance gates of sleeping Floreşti, like if this casual route had never been accepted and followed, and Elena realized with a blessed exciting joy, that she herself and everyone around her had just become the part of that delightful, heretic parade, recovering itself and coming back to the very roots, to the beginning of everything... just like a Devil will be forced to come back to God and to purify the stains from soul and half-material flesh - after the fifty thousands years of his own fiendish perverse game... like the mystery of final restoration of all the things proclaimed.
- She"s not a doll. Dallamos Halal is not a doll. She"s animated. The rubies became bloody and juicy from her single touch. Bloody and juicy like the life itself. Only from the touch of her hand. Just take a look, but be careful, because you might get blinded.
There were two little girls in the long, almost funeral gowns of white silk, sitting at the biggest window, and Elena heard one of them speaking. There was something brightly shining in her fragile hands, and Elena, straining her eyesight almost to pain, pricking like the pain around the heart, finally noticed that it was a silver pendant, so proudly gor-geous and immaculate that it could be worth of any living or dead king in the world. A scattering of huge rubies was decorating the jewellery, and those gemstones were like a pulsing drops of blood, already spilled out of the veins, but still remaining hot and visco-sweet, like the juice of poisonous berries. And so Elena wished she could receive the same gift from Dallamos Halal at the approaching morning, the same handful of shining rubies... she would decorate her sanctified orthodox cross with those gemstones and turn it into the the most powerful amulet, defending it"s carrier from the visions and nightmares, sent by demons to mislead the victim.
- Does though anybody know his real name?
The same childish voice, shivering of the solemn horror and feeling the approximation into the real State of Grace, caught Elena"s attention again and turned her completely into the hearing.
- Everybody knows. El Rey de Los Gatos is his only real name.
- But what does it mean?
- It means the King of Cats. Nine lives in every cat. All the lives of all the cats in him. He is immortal. He was living at the time of Goddess Bast in the Egypt, and he will keep on leaving after the Apocalypse along with the demons whose bodies can turn into cats. He is always young. And if he touches you, you"ll always remain young for-ever. You"ll never grow any older. He is...
- I wish I could be touched by his hand, - suddenly said Elena, interrupting their con-versation. - I wish I could remain as young as I am now forever after his touch.
She could recognize neither her voice, nor that strange passionate conviction she pro-nounced these words with. She surely wanted to say something else. To express, to pro-claim the most frenetic love she"s ever kept inside, under the skin... but something needed to prevent this almost fatal act. The bus, regurarly gaining the speed, suddenly stopped right in the middle of the highway, which has been desert and absolutely silent until the last minute. But now the road was completely blocked by the huge, countless mobs, waving their hands in the air and screaming the names Elena wanted to start screaming too, right at that moment:
- El Rey de Los Gatos! Dallamos Halal! The beast who has the wound from sword and comes back alive! The Antichrist! We perceive you! We follow you to get your bless-ing...
The remaining words got drowned in the sharp piercing sound of splintering glass: Elena saw the little girls with the ruby pendant breaking the windowpane and creeping out of the bus, while other people inside just kept on knocking the wedged doors. They couldn"t force themselves to hold the passionate fury back, couldn"t return into the lazy spiderwebs of quietness, controling them so harshly during all the road to Floreşti: they started to smash the windows and to break down the doors to get unleashed, to set themselves free from the shell. Elena followed this rabid herd - again without any slight-est occassional doubt, without any realized thought, again with the strange perverted pleasure of feeling herself involved in the whirlpool, of being the part of the total insan-ity, the one among the possessed. She squeezed her fists to pain, pushed the huge dusty glass out and jumped down from the windowframe on the asphalt.
- Oh God!...
The high wood stage, already almost unseen behind the swarming crowds, was blocking the suburb highway with the deadend, and the circles of the flavoured blueish fire were surrounding it, like nine circles of Hell surround the city of Lucifer. Elena rushed to it, being absolutely drunk of sweetest solemn delight, but next moment a fragile female figuire suddenly blocked the way, arisen in front of her out of the ground, appeared out from under. It was Dallamos Halal. A living doll. There were just two or three santime-ters, separating her from Elena, they were closer to each other, than the groom and the bride on their wedding, and it was the first, the last and the only time when a girl could discover dollish beauty of Dallamos Halal so completely. That mysterious creature of ether and utter dark had the skin of milky-white porcelain and the electrically bright em-erald eyes, pulsing with the strangest kind of energy. She caught Elena"s hand - her weak touch was icy and almost painful, but this pain brought the perverted triumph pleasure - and poured something, similar to pocketful of red seeds, in her shivering palm. It was a scattering of irreproachably perfect, glittering bloody rubies, cold and pricking the skin, like the tiny spikes.
- This is for you, - Dallamos Halal was speaking with the crystal ringing voice. - You"ll can make the amulet to defend yourself from the visions and nightmares.
Elena kept on staring at her, dazed and dumbfounded, like after the hit of the lightning.
- Come with us. We want your help.
A girl felt herself being slowly dragged forward, through the swarms of hysterically screaming people, - they all, like the clockwork toys, obediently moved aside to let her pass, - and then up to the very stage, inside this cocoon, woven of the suffocating fra-grance, hot blue smoke and constant solemn horror. She saw the immortal king of cats in the very heart of this little Hell, in his blinding bloody red robes, with the golden crown on his head and with a smile on his childish face. The hemlines of his clothes, his hair and even the edges of his nails were already absorbed by the frenzied fire, but the peace-ful, unbreakable serenity in his huge pale eyes was revealing, that the killing flame had no power above the boy, but in contrary - El Rey de Los Gatos could control the fire, the pain and the laws of life and death themselves, as easily as one can control the fingers on his hand. The wood under her feet wasn"t moving and none of the hits was punching her and pressing her - but she still could feel something, forcing her to make a step to the king of cats, through the instinctive fear of the fire and the horrified slave delight in front of it... so Elena got just a little bit closer to him, for the only santimeter - but this has been enough. The face of the breathing porcelain doll got disfiguired by the strange smile, innocently pure and fiendish at the very same time, and her electrically bright eyes threw the quick sight at Elena"s wrists, like if the bloodstreams were pulsing out of it"s veins... and next moment... when the painfully desired touch of the Beast, who has the wound from sword and comes back alive, became perceived on and underneath her skin, a girl suddenly... suddenly fell out of this reality to completely another one, so familiar, so usual and so madly hateful, penetrated back to it through the fragile borderline... back to the damned Şoldăneşti.
* * *
Elena saw it when she finally could dare to realize the phantasmagoric inversion, to chase the last shreds of the miraculuous visions away and just... to open her eyes. Şoldăneşti. Strada Eminescu. She didn"t want to believe herself, but she couldn"t simply obey to the deception, to let it control her mind and to get forced to enjoy, like people enjoy the drugs in their blood.
- Oh God... no... n-no!... no, no, it"s not truth! It can"t be truth! No... I don"t believe it...
She was hardly trying to hold back the tears, and only the strangest, the unbelievable cold, piercing this evening, kept on helping her, kept on playing by her side in this game, because it would be too painful to cry tonight, like at the winter frost. Feeling afraid and absolutely desolated, she sat down on the very curb of the pavement and stayed motion-less till she got so frozen that her fingers denied to squeeze and to keep the warmness inside. It was already about ten o"clock of the evening, when a girl finally forced herself to stand up and to try to move, to rush away from this place, but her knees stayed un-bending and inflexible, and she was walking on her feet, like a puppet, fastened to the invisible strings. The furious icy wind, rushing around the town, like in the deepest in-sanity, was pushing her in the back, punching in the chest, slapping her deadly pale cheeks and deckling her heavy black braids... there was something bloody scarlet glimpsed in front of her eyes, and Elena suddenly stopped motionlessly, got stoned, like if the abyss expanded right at her feet. The ribbon. It was the ribbon... the ribbon she cut in smalles pieces at this morning and left it redding on the floor, like the blood drops. She thought, no, she was absolutely sure, that her hair was waving freely behind her back and her shoulders, unfastened, cordless, like her mind itself... but it was all wrong, and those two thick black braids were plaited and decorated with scarlet ribbons, as usually, as everyday before this one, and were lying on her chest, gently warming the skin... as usually. The fear, ubiquitous and tyrannical, momently began to gain the power, and it didn"t really matter, that it seemed to be such a small thing... Elena surrendered for a moment, but then started a little rebellion against herself and her own obedience: she tried to believe that she plaited her hair not even realizing that, also at that morning, just because it was so familiar, so habitually, that already couldn"t take any attention...
- It"s like a breathing... it"s the same thing... you never remember that you keep on breathing until you force yourself to think about it... and nothing else. I just forgot about it... and now... close your eyes... deep breath... calm down. Forget it... please!... I beg you... you have to come back home... let"s go home... ho...hom-me... home!...
She was thrown into the deepest uncontrolable panic simply because she heard those freaky well-known notes in her own thoughts and in her own voice, slowly leading it"s way out of her mouth. Yes, it"s really been truth: she sounded just like Laura, her little sister of twelve, disfiguired and almost erased by the incurable disease.
- Why are you so scared, foolish puppet? Why do you need to remember the way back home to get there? You have the pocketful of gemstones in your raincoat. It"s a treasure. You are now richer than anybody else in this town. Just pick the smallest of the rubies and you can choose any car to bring you to Emil and Monica... and to Laura... if you want to see them so much. If you really want to come back there. It"s going to be so easy... just pick the smallest of the rubies.
The smile appeared on her white-out face; it was nervous and morbid, but it was the only expression, different from fear and exhaustment, that got perceived by the girl at that evening, since the very moment of the demented inversion. The smile remained visible for two or three seconds and then it vanished tracelessly: Elena put the hands in the pockets of her black raincoat, but her fingers didn"t find there anything but the pile of ashes. The pile of ashes... it was the only thing left from the precious gift, from the ru-bies she wanted to decorate the amulet with, to plea for protection against the visions and nightmares... sent by demones. Demones... the doll, decked with gold and precious stones and pearl... the Beast who has the wound from sword and comes back alive... she suddenly saw them once again - already not in their glorious circus, in their own state of grace, but in this reality, suffocatingly sultry, dirty and miserable, like the time before physical death itself. El Rey de Los Gatos. Dallamos Halal. They were both at the oppo-sitional part of the street, bended to the sideway curb. The living porcelain doll became dirty grey from head to toes, just like if the thin layers of ashes covered her skin and made the sight of her electric eyes dim, opaque and exhausted to absolute indifference. There was nothing left from her incredibly beautiful, magical dress, decorated with gold and gemstones: she was only dressed in the long black patent raincoat her fragile body kept on shivering under. She was holding a small piece of cartone with the ugly torn edges, and Elena could even force herself to read the sign, redding on it:
"We want your help no more. He"s dying".
Elena through her sight just a santimeter aside from a doll she knew under the name Dallamos Halal and saw her eternal fellow-wanderer. The immortal child has still been dressed in the bloody scarlet clothes, but it hasn"t already been that royal sparking robe, it"s been just a heap of bright shreds, sewed into the raincoat. He"s probably already been so sick that he couldn"t sit next to his doll anymore: he was helplessly lying on the curb, motionless, stoned in the unnatural pose, just like the life has already serpented out of his flesh. The boy"s head was put on the knee of the doll, and she was stroking his hair, still saving the gold color, but already becoming greyish and dim too. This strange damnated couple wasn"t begging anyone for a coin and wasn"t even trying to get anyone"s attention or mercy - not at all. They were only sitting there on the cold dirty asphalt because no-body of them had any strength, any need, any desire to walk further away from this street. Elena felt that she wanted to come up to them, to sit down on the curb next to them, to say something, like if it could have any meaning at that evening, - but strangely, she could neither plea nor force herself to do it, so she kept on staying motionless, with the feet frozen into the asphalt and with the lips stitched by the thick wool strings. An-other approaching wave of hypnotic oblivion scared Elena so much, that she just couldn"t resist this panic and, surrendering at the very first moment, closed her eyes and ranaway, following completely unknown destination and only trying to move as fast as it could be possible... and even faster.
* * *
It was really a miracle that she didn"t break the bones after the painfull falls on the iron ground, that she wasn"t hit by the cars, riding around the town boards with the speed of sound, - and that she found the way back home not even searching it. But it was the most disgusting, the most hateful of all the miracles ever happened in the world. Elena firstly couldn"t dare to believe her own eyes, asking for asylum in the darkness of the creeping night, but there could be absolutely no mistake: it was the street she lived on, the house she lived in, the doorway her family"s flat was placed in, at the lowest floor. It"s probably already been around midnight, the time when both Emil and Monica always were awake, but none of the four windows was lighted, not even the blueish shades of TV screen were chasing the darkness away. Elena walked into the doorway, trying to make the slow and absolutely soundless steps, just like everything around her have turned into the one huge mousetrap; when approached to the flat, she began to look for the keys in the pockets of her raincoat and quickly fell down into the terrible despair: she creeped out of the window of her room and she didn"t take the keys. Her hand mechani-cally rose up to the bell, but suddenly got stoned in the only santimeter away from the button. It"s firstly been much closer to perfect illusion, than to reality, but Elena didn"t get confused: there was a tiny narrow space pouring the moonlight, that"s already begun to knock the windows, out of the flat... the door was left unlocked and opened, so Elena pushed it and stepped inside, into the corridor. There was something especcially freaky here, something fatal, perceived by the skin, freezing in the air at that motionless cold night. The sultry suffocation felt to be absolutely exhausting, killing with more perverted cruelty than anytime before, and it was the deadly silence, muteness in every corner, on every millimeter of the walls and floors, but this silence was binging, was cutting, was hurting the ears. It could be taken as the sign of peace, of constant serenity, but this could become the freakiest last mistake: it was the sign of hiding danger, waiting only for the right moment to attack. Elena needed to obey this presentiment as soon as it became so obviously, so painfully clear - and she understood it, she wanted this to happen, but instead of escape she simply kept on crawling deeper into this cage. She saw the door of her room widely opened instead of being locked from the inside, as she thought she left it; the window was shut and hidden behind the light covers, and it was a freaky mess eve-rywhere, like if Elena was madly looking for something before she"s been gone. It"s maybe been a deception of the eye, a confusion, a disfiguiring of reality, caused by the game of liquid moonlight - but a girl clearly saw an empty pack of medicines among the heaps of rubbish. It was a strong mercyless hypnotic, prescribed for Laura along with the dozens of another pills, tablets and mixtures.
- Laura!...
Elena breathed her name out panically, slammed the door and almost ran to sister"s bed-room. There was something sticky and slippery everywhere on the floor, everywhere be-hind her feet so she nearly fell down during her short way; the door to Laura"s room was locked and also stained with the same dirt as the floor in the corridor... but next to that door Elena saw three more packs of hypnotic, absolutely empty... and she felt the slight smell of the iron, mixed with the smell of decay and physical disintegration... it was the smell thickened blood always has, intoxicating the air and tormenting the mind with the freaky images of yet warm, but torn and moveless bodies. A girl finally started to realize that she has just let the tragedy to happen and cut the ways to salvation by her own hands, so she rushed back from sister"s room to the door, with a silent prayer to remain invisible and impregnable for a minute more, but there was something suddenly stopped her again. The letter in front of the mirror, in a single step aside from the door. Two pa-per sheets, completely filled by the nervously written black lines.
"I runaway. I disappear, leaving no traces behind, I"m about to be gone with the light, with the sound and with the air - so that nothing could ever remind you I"ve been at this place someday, I"ve been next to you and been a part of you..."
It wasn"t the letter she left here in front of the mirror. It was the letter she wrote for her parents at the very beginning, but then torn it to pieces and replaced with the single line.
"I"ll never see you again. Thank God. Elena, never yours".
- Elena?...
Hysterically shivering, mindless voice a girl firstly couldn"t dare to recognize - but it sounded too loud and too closely from her to be simply ignored as before.
- D-daddy?...
- You came back home...
Just a moment has passed - and a girl noticed the darkly redding spot on father"s shirt, screamed in the complete insanity, trying to wake all the town, every single house in Şoldăneşti up, and rushed out of the flat.
- Something freaky happened... something freaky happened... happened as it had to happen, we all could always feel it!... just a matter of time it was, just a matter of time and so the time has come!...
Her panic horrifying thoughts were carrying her above the ground, like the invisible wings, and it seemed like nobody was chasing her. She ran downstairs and already saw the goldish light of the street lamp outside, but right when she was crossing the threshold of the doorway, two heavy fiendish hits descended on her head. She fell down on the dirty stone floor and didn"t stand up anymore.